Connections at SXSW

This is what I love about representing WordPress(.com) “in the field” at SXSW.

After a long evening working an event, we had a couple of guys sit at the bar with myself and a couple of coworkers. When we were asked what we do, we answered “Vague Internet Things”.

“That’s great—as long as it isn’t that fucking WordPress!”

Welp.

After hearing him out and talking through his beef some, by the end he said, “Of course, I sit down hating WordPress and now I want to work with y’all!”

The Internet and the work we do is still, in root, about connecting with people.

Credit Confusion

I have an old credit card. I got it in college and I almost never use it. Every blue moon, I’ll use it when making a purchase and the funds aren’t immediately available. See, I have a checking and a savings account and all the money is in the savings account…

Anyhow and in other words, I really don’t care about the account.

They sent a new card and the online activation failed. Oh well. I called the number on the card instead. Usually, phone activation is incredibly fast. This time, they referred me to a person. They asked for my “password”. Alright, I gave it to them. No, the “security word” that I provided when I opened the account in 2004.

I took a stab. Wrong one. Well, I don’t really care about the card and it isn’t worth my time to be transferred to someone else—the next step apparently. The poor lady’s confusion when I didn’t care to figure out the issue was laughable.

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Cake

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday—whatever you call it, it is the last day before Lent begins. Traditionally, the day is celebrated in some way, often pancakes as a way to use and enjoy eggs, milk, sugar and other foods that were often abstained from during Lent.

For us, every season is Lent for eggs and milk with multiple kids with allergies, but the celebration continues nevertheless. Vanessa outdid herself with a pancake cake. She made a number of pancakes of different sizes, alternating between vegan vanilla and vegan chocolate pancakes in decreasing size. Flipping the largest pancake is a feat the deserves a medal.

Pancake cake!
Pancake cake!
Catalina can't keep herself back.
Catalina can’t keep herself back.
It is a ship of wonder.
It is a ship of wonder.
Vanessa rocked this.
Vanessa rocked this.

That Time CNN Interviews You…

Don’t tweet @Velveeta about Super Bowl queso – Video – Technology

Around Thanksgiving, Abby from CNN reached out wanting to do a story about my Internet-famous Twitter confusion and when she realized that both @Velveeta and I lived in Austin, it was the tipping point for her to fly out to visit with us.

It was quite a bit of fun for the whole interview process (amazing how much time goes into a three-minute spot). Still to this day, I haven’t met @Velveeta in person.

If you haven’t seen it, I talk about it more in-depth in this four-minute piece from 2013 and then when Kraft Foods sent me more cheese later in 2014.

I’ve had a little press about it including the New York Daily News and Digiday before, but this was the first video piece.

As @Velveeta tweeted me tonight, we’re both bracing ourselves. The Twitter mentions have already started to flow in.

twittermeme

Baby Fed Nothing But Almond Milk Develops Rare, 500-Year-Old Disease

Baby develops disease after living with severe lack of nutrition because of almond milk.

Source: Baby Fed Nothing But Almond Milk Develops Rare, 500-Year-Old Disease

Packages of almond milk, in the United States at least, have warnings that it should not be given to children under 1 year old. Despite the headline being a bit of clickbait—rare isn’t enough? 500-year-old disease? I caught a disease over 300 years old last year called the flu—the case is a good reminder.

The warning means something and is there for a reason.

Catholic Church’s Hold on Schools at Issue in Changing Ireland

Almost all state-funded primary schools — nearly 97 percent — are under church control, and Irish law allows them to consider religion the main factor in admissions. As a practical matter, that means local schools, already oversubscribed, often choose to admit Catholics over non-Catholics.

Source: Catholic Church’s Hold on Schools at Issue in Changing Ireland – The New York Times

Taking this article on face value, as the Times has been known to highlight anti-Catholic angles and gloss over the opposite opinion, this does seem ripe for change.

I’m not Irish and not from Ireland, so I won’t claim to have any solution or real opinion, but I’m curious about the following questions:

  • Is there any notion of private schools in Ireland? How are they funded?
  • If self/parent-funded, is there any tradition of modestly-priced private schools?
  • What percentage of pupils, all things being equal, would choose to attend a Catholic school if it was next-door to a secular school?
  • Is there a place for religious “charter schools”, schools that receive funding from the state but are not the primary schools in the area?

I’m Catholic, with a child in a Catholic school, married to someone on a Catholic school board in the United States. At least within Texas, Catholic schools are generally privately funded—there are some public grants that any school—Catholic or otherwise—can be awarded and there may be school lunch money out there that Catholic schools can tap into, I’m not sure. In any event, virtually all operations are funded privately.

This usually comes from parents, donors to the specific school, the diocese (the geographical grouping of individual churches), and, if attached to a specific parish, a local parish.

In our case, we pay out-of-pocket for our daughter’s education, while still paying property taxes to the local school district. Specifically, we paid approximately 130% of our private school tuition bill to the local school district.1

For Ireland, I’m interested in what something similar would look like, the issues that it would generate, and any type of transitionary model.

  1. Granted, we have five kids. As soon as #2 starts school, the local tax bill would be less. ↩